Dem
51
GOP
49
Newly-minted Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) has apparently hit the ground running. He is not pleased about claims that the state's elections are fraudulent, nor about some of the behavior those claims have engendered. And so, he sent a letter yesterday to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), asking for an investigation of failed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R).
The specific concern that Fontes wants Mayes to look into is a tweet that Lake posted after the election. She is a world-renowned expert on handwriting of course, and so she concluded that some of the signatures on Arizona absentee ballots did not match the signature that the state has on file. To persuade her supporters of this, she posted copies of many of the signatures to Twitter. Oops. Turns out it's a felony in Arizona to reproduce someone's signature unless you are yourself the signatory, or you are their dully authorized representative.
Clearly, this is a little bit nitpicky. However, some of the more damaging stuff Lake does is not illegal, or at least cannot plausibly be prosecuted. This behavior, by contrast, is illegal, and the law behind it has teeth. Sometimes, Al Capone-style, a prosecutor has to go with whatever they can make stick in a court of law. And Mayes probably could make this stick, as the situation is pretty cut-and-dried.
Will Mayes actually prosecute Lake, though? Obviously, the right-wing politicians and pundits of the world will scream bloody murder and will claim it's a witch hunt and another case of weaponizing government power against Republicans and yadda, yadda, yadda. But the fact is that people like Lake, and her idol Donald Trump, get away with making some very damaging claims because there have been few or no consequences for them in doing so. If law enforcement can see to it that there are some actual consequences to reckless election-denial claims, at least once in a while, maybe it will make some of these people think twice. So, we are certainly hoping Mayes takes up the case. Of course, we don't get a vote. (Z)
The only women to get RNC delegate support are Margaret Chase Smith, who got 27 delegates in 1964; Anne Armstrong, who got one in 1980; and Michele Bachmann, who got one in 2012. If you got one of the three women correct, that is very good. If you got two, that's truly impressive. And if you got all three, how come we are writing this blog instead of you?